Germany wants a humanitarian asylum policy, but Italy says it will be unworkable | Abroad

The Netherlands, present in the person of State Secretary Van der Burg, is closer to Italy. In the words of an EU diplomat, the German government is ‘under the spell of the Greens’, the second coalition party.

The EU has had agreements on migrants since the 1990s, but these no longer work in practice. According to these so-called Dublin rules, the country where someone first enters must complete the asylum procedure. Only: In practice, these are almost always the countries on the Mediterranean Sea. And they can’t handle the influx. That is why they sometimes allow migrants to travel to the north unhindered, which leads to a reception crisis and political tensions, particularly in the Netherlands and Belgium.

Talks about a solution were stalled for years, but have gained momentum in recent weeks. This spring, the European Parliament approved proposals from the European Commission, now the member states. The core: stricter controls at the external borders, removing the ‘hopeless’ asylum seekers from there, and a fairer distribution of the rest among the various countries.

Everyone agrees on this stricter control. The discussion is still focused on the accelerated ‘border procedure’ that will apply to migrants with nationalities whose applications are rejected in 80 percent of cases. Closed centers are being set up at the external border of the EU for this purpose. The migrants can then, if they are indeed not entitled to asylum, be returned within three months.

Germany, like part of the House of Representatives, wants families and unaccompanied children to be exempted from this procedure. But Italy, and also the Dutch government, fears that families will send their children ahead even more often, and that young adult men will pose as children. As a compromise, an age limit of 14 years was discussed on Thursday. Then ‘real’ children can be spared, while boys aged 17 or 18 from, say, Morocco are more quickly banned.

Germany also wants the definition of a safe country to which people can be returned after that expedited procedure to be narrowly formulated. There must be a connection: their own country or somewhere where relatives live. Italy and the other ‘frontline’ countries want to formulate this broadly: if a migrant has traveled safely through Turkey or Tunisia, for example, those countries are also a suitable destination. Otherwise, Italy will be left with it.

While pressuring Germany, ways to accommodate Italy were also discussed on Thursday. A distribution key will be introduced for migrants who are admitted to the normal procedure, such as refugees from Syria (the Netherlands 4.95 percent). There is already agreement on that. The takeover of a refugee can be bought off: the price that is now on the table is 20,000 euros per head. But this amount could be increased by 1000 or 2000 euros, as an EU diplomat said.

Then there is the issue of migrants traveling illegally from one EU country to another, usually from the south to the north. The term in which the country of arrival remains responsible for reception, and to which people can therefore be returned under Dublin rules, is set at two years in the proposal. It could get shorter.

Thursday’s discussions were complex and technical. Meanwhile, Rome was also looked at with a slanted eye, where Prime Minister Meloni received German Chancellor Scholz. And to Tunisia, where Meloni, Commission President Von der Leyen and Prime Minister Rutte will visit on Sunday. A so-called Tunisia deal, in which that country receives money in exchange for stopping refugees, could limit the influx. And that would make making concessions easier, as one diplomat said.